gregoryjenks

Category: Sermons

  • Through resurrection eyes

    Through resurrection eyes

    16 April 2017
    Easter Eucharist
    St Pauls’ Church, Byron Bay

    THIS past week we have walked the road to Calvary:

    • Palm Sunday
    • Maundy Thursday
    • Good Friday
    • Holy Saturday

    Today we begin our Easter celebrations. They will stretch through the next 50 days. Long after the shops have removed the hot cross buns—along with the ANZAC biscuits and the Mother’s Day cards—the church will still be celebrating Easter. Our paschal candle will burn brightly at every service from today until Pentecost: the Great Fifty Days of Easter.

    This ‘week of weeks’ is a symbol of prophetic fulfilment and cosmic abundance, with roots going deep back in time to the annual grain harvest in Palestine.

    Across Jerusalem and throughout Palestine this morning, the faithful are greeting one another with the Easter proclamation:

    almaseeh qaam / haqaan qaam
    Christ is risen / Risen indeed

    Here in the Antipodes, far from the empty tomb, we join the worldwide celebrations.

    Through resurrection eyes

    Let’s take this opportunity to reflect on the meaning of Easter, to look at life through resurrection eyes.

    What difference does Easter make: for Jesus? for the world? for the churches here in the Bay?

    In very broad terms, let me suggest that in the events of Easter we glimpse God’s hopes and dreams for the future of the world, indeed for the entire universe.

    What God did for Jesus, God does for us. What God did for Jesus, God wishes to do for everyone. What God did for Jesus, is what God intends to achieve for all creation, and nothing will stop God’s love from achieving that outcome.

    This is the good news that lies at the heart of our Holy Saturday celebrations last night.

    When Jesus walked out of Hell on Easter morning, no-one was left behind.

    To summarise the message from last night, let me repeat just a few lines from that sermon:

    In the end, when God’s love has penetrated even the darkest recess of Hell, no-one will be left behind. God’s love will bring everyone with Jesus into the future God has prepared for his creation.

    No-one is left behind.

    The risen Lord

    At Easter Jesus passed through and beyond death. There was no detour for him, just as there will be no detour around death for us. To experience what lies beyond death Jesus had to pass through death.

    But his cry of dereliction on the cross—”My God, my God, what have you forsaken me?”—was met and matched by God’s eternal vindication.

    The fear and hatred directed at Jesus did not have the final word.

    In the end, love won. It always does.

    The ancient Christian hymn already known by Paul and the Christians at Philippi, includes these lines:

    … and being found in human form,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death
    —even death on a cross.
    Therefore God also highly exalted him
    and gave him the name that is above every name … (Philippians 2:7–9 NRSV)

    Some scholars have tried to express the difference Easter made to Jesus by speaking of “Jesus before Easter” and the “post-Easter Christ”.

    Jesus before Easter speaks of God’s kingdom, which is in deep opposition to Empire (about which I shall say more in a moment). After Easter, we recognise the risen Lord as not just the prophet of the kingdom but also, in some sense, the one who gives us access to the reign of God, the empire of love.

    At Christmas we traditionally think of Jesus as IMMANUEL, God with us. But the Immanuel dynamic of the incarnation is matched and fulfilled by the Immanuel dynamic of Easter. God was in Christ, and that is the great Immanuel insight at the heart of our faith as Christians.

    Here I think we can learn something very important from the Eastern Christians. For them, salvation is best expressed not as life beyond death, but as the divinization of humankind. God becomes human in Christ, so that all of us can become divine in Christ. Immanuel.

    That changes everything, and not just for Jesus.

    A world beyond empire

    Empire killed Jesus.

    It was nothing personal. Empire kills anyone it cannot control. Jesus would not march to the beat of empire’s drum, so Jesus had to die.

    By empire we mean that system of power which allows a privileged elite to exploit and control others for the advantage of the elite. Empire is about domination and privilege. It exploits the poor and the powerless, and distracts us with bread and circus.

    These days the ‘bread and circus’ that keep us quiet in the face of such injustice may take the form of superannuation and sport, or maybe it is Facebook. Whatever its form, it works well to keep us acquiescent—until Jesus opens our eyes.

    Easter demonstrates that the Empire is broken.

    Empire’s awesome projection of absolute power over us is flawed. The golden statue has earthen feet. Easter has exposed the ultimate inability of Empire to define us or our future.

    Jesus was right to proclaim the kingdom of God, the basileia tou theou. We can choose whether to remain enthralled by Empire, or to embrace the reign of God, the commonwealth of love.

    We can opt out of Empire.

    Empire remains powerful. It killed Jesus and may kill us. It is not just a metaphor, as the victims in Syria have again reminded us so tragically in the past few days.

    In the end, Empire need not define us.

    In the end, Love wins.

    If that is true—and Jesus staked his life on it being true—then the world would be a different kind of place, if only we took it seriously.

    Empire will seek to stop us. Empire will seek to intimidate us. Empire will seek to silence us.

    But Jesus has defeated Empire. Jesus has broken the power of death. Jesus has set us free to imagine a new kind of world.

    Gospel communities

    Let make all this lofty rhetoric local. How might Easter make a difference to the way that the Christian churches operate here in the Bay?

    For starters, we would stop worrying about survival, since we would realise deep within our bones that God has the future under control. In the end love wins. We are on the winning side of history. It does not all depend on us. Recall the Immanuel principle. God is among us and working to achieve God’s own dream for the universe. In the end love wins.

    What if we transferred our best emerges from fear to hope? What might be some of the core attributes of a church—regardless of its tradition—that took Easter seriously?

    We would focus on building and sustaining communities of faith where ordinary people are valued, respected and loved. We would be safe communities: communities where it is safe to be vulnerable, and communities where no one is ever abused. Ever.

    We would be forming communities of radical hospitality where acceptance is not mortgaged to conformity. Our churches will be places where everyone is welcome, and they do not have to dress like us, think like us, or love like us, in order to feel welcome and at home among us. The diversity of the people in our pews would reflect the diversity of the people in our streets.

    We would become centres of resistance to Empire as we focus on what matters to God, and not what matters to the powerful and the wealthy. We would be communities that are passionate about social justice, about refugees, about world peace, and about community well-being. We might even find ourselves in trouble with the authorities because of our courageous action to make the world a better place.

    We would reclaim our original vocation as stewards of creation. In the ancient creation stories in Genesis, humans are fashioned out of the earth and our primary task is to care for the garden. The integrity of creation matters to God, and churches that take Easter seriously will be communities that care deeply about the environment. Here in this beautiful part of Australia, our passion for creation may mean that we find ourselves in coalition with people of very different beliefs, but with a common concern for the world that we believe is also a beneficiary of God’s game changer at Easter.

    Each of these kingdom of God communities will be an oasis of authentic spirituality. We will be a community of practice that moves beyond affirmation to action, helping each other to shape lives that are ‘holy’ and ‘true’. We will work alongside people of different faiths, and Christians from different traditions, confident that—in the end—love wins.

    What a blessing we would be to the local community here in the Bay, if we redirected our best energies from institutional survival to a passion for human flourishing.

    Imagine a church like that.

    Imagine a world blessed by such an expression of Easter faith.

  • None left behind

    15 April 2017
    Easter Eve Vigil Eucharist
    St Oswald’s Church, Broken Head

    TONIGHT we begin our Easter celebrations. they will stretch through the next 50 days. This ‘week of weeks’ is a symbol of prophetic fulfilment and cosmic abundance, with roots going deep back in time to the annual grain harvest in Palestine.

    As a vigil service, this liturgy invites us to reflect on the role of ritual in our faith, but also in our personal lives. Ritual enhances, deepens and magnifies the inner reality that we are observing.

    A candlelit dinner is not about a suitable lumen count. It is a ritual that suggests intimacy and love.

    On this night we dig deep into the church’s treasure chest to choose some rituals that we hope are especially apt for the occasion.

    A Vigil

    In the Jewish calendar the new day begins on the previous sunset, so in biblical time we are already in the early hours of Sunday, the first day of the week. We observe such “eves” in the liturgical life of the church, but they mostly pass unnoticed. Christmas Eve is well known, but the Eve of All Hallows (All Saints), is not so easily recognised in its contemporary guise as Halloween.

    Sunday

    Despite our digital calendars that prioritise the weekend, Sunday is actually the first day of the week. In the Bible it is also the first day of creation, as well as the eighth day in Jewish thinking about the end of time! As the eighth day, Sunday hints at resurrection and cosmic fulfilment.

    Fire

    Without iPhones and electric lights, nights were long and dark in the ancient past. Fires were lit to keep the darkness at bay, and to warm the cool evening. The community gathered around the fire, to share stories, and to deepen their life together. The light of the fire shattered the darkness, perhaps evoking memories of a burning bush or a pillar of fire.

    Saving Adam
    In the Orthodox tradition Adam plays a bigger role at Easter than in our Western traditions.

    Golgotha, the ‘place of the skull’, is understood to be the place of Adam’s burial. You will see his skull below the cross in most Orthodox icons of the crucifixion. As Jesus, the second Adam, dies on the cross, his blood brings new life to old Adam.

    We also see this expressed beautifully in the icons of the Anastasis, the Resurrection, as the triumphant Christ raises Adam and Eve from their grave as he himself rises from the dead.

    These are poetic ways of doing theology, but if we have ‘eyes to see’ then we can discern the deep truths in these ancient symbols. As the Second Adam, Christ brings new life to Adam and Eve, and to us all as their children.

    Harrowing of hell

    There is another Easter tradition that is especially relevant to today, Holy Saturday.

    We find this tradition preserved in 1 Peter 3:

    For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit,in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison,who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark … (1 Peter 3:18–20 NRSV)

    It is also preserved in the Apostles’ Creed, as well as in a number of ancient extra-canonical Christian texts.

    This idea has largely dropped out of favour in the West, but it preserves another way of thinking about Easter. In this tradition, Jesus uses the time between Good Friday and Easter Day to visit Hell, and while there he destroys the place. On Easter Day, Christ marches out of Hell followed by a great procession of people from all times and places who he has set free from death.

    No-one is left behind.

    What a powerful antidote to the religion that exploits fear of being ‘left behind’ to pressure people into particular expressions of Christianity.

    In the end, when God’s love has penetrated even the darkest recess of Hell, no-one will be left behind. God’s love will bring everyone with Jesus into the future God has prepared for his creation.

    No-one is left behind.

    Of course, none of these rituals and poetic myths are essential. Knowing them does not make one a better person, and observing them does not make one a better Christian. But they enrich our lives and enhance our faith. They may even touch us in ways that words fail to do.

    Rather than asking how much of this stuff we really need to observe, we are better to respond with grateful hearts. We can choose to put aside a compliance mentality that seeks the minimum required to gain a passing grade. We can choose instead to embrace the rituals that speak to us, those that touch us—and transform us—most deeply.

    What matters most is not that we get the ritual right this evening, but that we have the life of the risen Christ within us.

    Christ is risen!
    He is risen indeed.

  • Christ has died

    Good Friday
    14 April 2017
    Byron Bay

     

    Today we gather to commemorate the death of Jesus: most likely on Friday, 7 April 0030.

    We are not re-enacting the crucifixion, but we are remembering that tragic event and reflecting on its significance.

     

    Christ has died

    We are familiar with this affirmation that occurs in almost every Eucharist.

    Christ has died.

    This is one of the few ‘brute facts’ about Jesus where most people agree.

    Jesus was killed in Jerusalem on April 7 in the year 30 CE. Although we call this day ‘Good Friday’, the death of Jesus was a tragedy. Not a unique tragedy. He was neither the first nor the last to be killed by empire. His death was not more painful than some others have experienced. But it was a tragedy for him, for his family, and for his followers.

    The fact that this tragedy on Easter morning was reversed does not detract from its tragic character.

    We may be tempted to focus on the second and third lines of the Eucharistic affirmation:

    Christ is risen
    Christ will come again

    But first we need to confront the reality of the first line: Christ has died.

    The stark reality of that statement is something we need to acknowledge and embrace.

    We cannot get to the resurrection without first facing the fact that Jesus died. He was killed.

    This is not just a question of temporal sequence. While it is logically correct that there could be no Easter without Good Friday, that is not the point. Something deeper is happening here.

    We catch a glimpse of what is at stake if we try some alternative scenarios.

    “Jesus almost died in Jerusalem” does not work in the same way as “Christ has died”. “That visit to Jerusalem for Passover almost cost Jesus his own life,” simply does not do it.

    “Christ has died” is a stark statement of the brute fact at the heart of our faith.

    God let Jesus die.

    There was no divine rescue squad. No legions of angels intervened to prevent this tragic turn of events. There was no last minute reprieve no ram in the bush.

    Jesus is not James Bond achieving a remarkable turn around just before the movie ends. This was not a movie. It was real life. He died. God was silent, if not absent.

    Just as often happens in our world, Jesus died and there was no miracle to stop it from happening.

    Just as was the case for the 44 Christians killed in Egypt last Sunday.

    Just as was the case for the children gassed in Syria few days earlier.

    Just as remains the case for the children of Gaza under Israeli siege.

    Like Jesus we cry out, Where are you, God?

    That was the lived reality for Jesus.

    That is the lived reality for us.

    That is the lived reality for most people most of the time.

     

    Christ crucified

    Jesus died a particular kind of death: crucifixion.

    Imperial punishment – by Rome but only for non-Romans

    Political victim – reserved for bandits, outlaws and rebels

    Cruel and inhumane – a slow and painful death

    Shameful death – victim stripped of dignity and honour

    Social outcast – victim isolated from family and community

    Religious penalty – OT says anyone hung on a tree is cursed

     

    Don’t blame the Jews!

    This seems obvious, since only Rome could order a crucifixion. But for most of the last 2000 years Christians have blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus, and played down the responsibility of the Roman imperial authorities for the execution of Jesus.

    What happened to Jesus is an example of empire doing what empire does. Empire treats people as disposable assets. Empire crushes any resistance. Empire cannot imagine a world shaped by love rather than fear. Empire eliminates emerging leaders of dissent.

     

    God was in Christ

    The remarkable thing is not that the Roman empire took Jesus out, but that his followers came to see his crucifixion as the decisive moment of his life.

    Listen to these amazing words penned by Paul, a Roman citizen, about 25 years after Easter:

    From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. [2 Corinthians 5:16–21 NRSV]

    In the totally bleak and hostile event they discerned the presence of God, quietly working for the reconciliation of the whole world.

    God was in Christ …

    • not just in his incarnation
    • not just in his wisdom
    • not just in his healings
    • not just in his compassionate welcome of outsiders

    … but in his cruel and lonely death by crucifixion.

    Even there God was present. Even on the cross we discover IMMANUEL, God with us.

    So we dare to believe that God is in our darkest moments. Not preventing them, but sharing them. Not turning the darkness into sunlight, but absorbing the darkness, the despair and the fear.

    Good Friday proclaims not a prosperity gospel, but a gospel of divine presence.

    The Romans thought they had crucified Jesus, but God was in Christ … so everything is different.

  • Breaking bread, sharing a cup

    Maundy Thursday
    13 April 2017
    Byron Bay

    A small group of people are gathered in an upstairs room in a modest house on the Western Hill of Jerusalem. It is Passover time in Jerusalem and the Holy City is full of pilgrims.

    When

    In the local imperial calendar it was the sixteenth year of Emperor Augustus.

    Writing about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry when he was baptised by John around a year earlier, Luke offers us a set of overlapping chronologies that help us determine the date for both the commencement and the end of Jesus‘ mission:

    … when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
    and Herod was ruler of Galilee,
    and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis,
    and Lysanias ruler of Abilene,  
    during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas … [Luke 3:1–2]

    In the Jewish calendar this meal was late on the fourteenth day of Nisan—already Nisan 15 in Jewish ritual since the new day begins at sunset—in the year 3,790 from creation.

    In our terms, it was April 6 in the year of our Lord 30 (or, as we say these days, year 30 in the Common Era).

    Who

    The small group gathered in this borrowed room are also pilgrims visiting the Holy City for Passover.

    They are from the Galilee and have made the 100km walk over several days.

    Who was in the room?

    Well, we have Jesus and 12 male disciples. But there were others in the group around Jesus, including men not counted among the Twelve, as well as several women. The most notable of the women was Mary Magdalene, along with Mary the mother of Jesus. They were hardly going to be left out of the event!

    The Gospel writers focus on the men, as have the church artists over the years. But there is no reason to think the meal was limited to just the 13 males. Everything we know about Jesus suggests that the group would have been more diverse than that.

    Why

    These are Jews gathered to observe Passover, their most important religious ritual.

    Passover celebrates liberation and hope.

    Salvation in the distant past.
    Salvation here and now.
    Salvation in the distant future.

    Jesus has come to Jerusalem with his closest followers. They have gathered in this upper room. They are keeping the ancient rituals, and creating some new ones.

    On this night

    Almost 2000 years later we gather to remember and repeat that ancient ritual meal.

    On this night, we give thanks for the institution of the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, the Supper of the Lord. In this Eucharist—as in every Eucharist—we gather at the Table of the Lord, and we believe that Jesus is amongst us.

    This week our liturgical colour has been red for the passion of Christ, but tonight we have white vestments as we celebrate the origins of our Eucharistic rituals.

    The roots of our ritual reach deep back into Jewish tradition. All the way back to that first Passover when God liberated the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. We are not Jews, but Jesus was, so their God is our God. They blessed bread and wine to invoke God’s favour, and we do the same.

    But for us the bread and wine become the real presence of Christ among us, the one in whom God comes among us to answer our prayers and set us free.

    Jesus is not only to be found in the bread and wine.

    He is also to be found in the person beside us, in homeless, in the refugees, in the flood victims, in the sad, and in the happy.

    The stranger we welcome is Christ in our midst.

    The person whose foot we wash is Christ in our midst.

    The person we ignore is Christ in our midst.

    The face we see in the mirror is Christ in our midst.

    Conscious of Christ in our midst …

    • we hear again the new commandment:
      love one another as I have loved you
    • we participate in the ceremony of foot washing:
      brother/sister, let me serve you
    • we reflect on the betrayal and arrest of Jesus:
      those who live by the sword, die by the sword
    • we recall the flight of fearful disciples:
      before the cock crows you will deny me three times

    Eucharist as pattern for holy living

    Before we move to the more solemn aspects of this evening, let’s reflect on some ways in which the Eucharist offers a pattern for faithful living.

    The Eucharist is our primary ritual as Christians. It defines us and sustains us.

    As we have already noted, its roots go deep back into the Jewish scriptures. But Eucharist also grows out of the daily experience of Jesus and his disciples as they share informal meals by the side of the road.

    A Eucharist can be grand or simple, but it is a ritual for a pilgrim people. It is the ultimate portable ritual that requires no special holy place, because any place is holy when we break the bread together.

    Whether a High Mass in the Cathedral or a simple celebration in a nursing home, there is a pattern to the Eucharist that reflects, informs, and strengthens the pattern of our own lives.

    We do not have time to tease all these elements out, but notice how our order of service reflects the shape of our life as disciples:

    1. Gathering as people called together by God
    2. Reconciliation and forgiveness
    3. Listening for the word of the Lord
    4. Affirming our faith within the life of the church
    5. Prayers for others and for ourselves
    6. Offering our gifts, ourselves, our all
    7. Giving thanks for God’s blessings
    8. Feeding on Christ, the source of our life
    9. Sent out on mission

    May the pattern of our ritual tonight also be the pattern of living, day by day.

  • Different drum beats

    Palm Sunday (Year A)
    St Paul’s Anglican Church, Byron Bay
    9 April 2017

    Well, here we are …

    With Christians around the world, we mark the beginning of Holy Week with the beautiful liturgy of the palms and at least a short procession.

    This is a different kind of service. It can be a bit chaotic at times. It is certainly longer than a ‘normal  Sunday’. But this is no normal day. This is the first day of Holy Week.

    The events of this week shape our identity as Christians.

    The events of this week are the very centre of our faith.

    For that reason, around the world today millions of Christians will join us in the observance of Palm Sunday.

    Because this is a year when the Eastern and Western calendars are in sync, there will be huge crowds in the Holy Land. To make this an even bigger week tomorrow is the eve of Passover, the night when the ancient paschal Seder will be observed by Jeweish households all around the world.

    Yes, this is a big week, but it is also a reminder that the people of God are divided and fearful. Instead of serving as a beacon of hope to the world, we hide our light under the bushel of religious tribalism.

     

    Flashback

    Around this time almost 2,000 years ago there was the original Palm Sunday procession.

    Jewish pilgrims were converging on the Jerusalem from near and far. Three times a year they were encouraged to be in the Holy City for the high Jewish festivals: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. But Passover was the big one. It celebrated the exodus from Egypt, liberation from slavery, and their unique calling to be the people of God.

    Among the Jewish pilgrims heading to Jerusalem was a group of Galileans led by Jesus of Nazareth.

    Jesus was bringing his prophetic message of the ‘kingdom (empire) of God’ from Galilee to Jerusalem, from the edges to the very centre of privilege and power.

    Jesus was living out—and inviting others also to live out—a new vision of God, a fresh glimpse of reality.

    This was the vision that would take him to the cross.

    This was the vision that sparked the birth of Christianity.

    This was a vision that the church too easily and too often forgets.

    Around the same time, even if not exactly the same day, another very different procession was making its way into Jerusalem on the western side of the city, the side nearest the Mediterranean Sea.

    Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator for Judea and Samaria, was making his way to Jerusalem for Passover. He was not coming as a pilgrim, but as the Roman official responsible to keep all the pilgrims in order.

    There will be no liberation of the oppressed this Passover. Pilate is here to ensure that.

    The power of Rome has Jerusalem in its grip, and the ancient Jewish aspirations for liberation will be empty words again this Passover. Pilate is here to ensure that.

    Beyond the scope of their vision, the men at the head of these two processions were destined to meet within a few days time.

    One seemed very powerful.

    The other seemed very weak.

    The smart money was on the Empire. It always is.

    But God was with the little guy. God always is. That is the message of Passover.

    To help us tease out the significance of Jesus being in Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday, let’s watch a brief video clip from Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the USA:

    2017 Easter Message from Michael Curry

     

    The beat of a different drum

    In that video clip, Michael Curry speaks of the ‘Jesus movement’. It is one of his favourite ways of speaking about the church.

    We are not best described as a multi-national institution operating for almost 2000 years and with vast resources. At our best, when we have not lost sight of the vision that Jesus embodied, we are the Jesus movement.

    The Jesus movement began with an alternative view of reality.

    Jesus saw the world differently. Jesus was counter-cultural. Jesus was out of step with his contemporaries.

    Palm Sunday invites us to be out of step. Palm Sunday calls us to walk against the grain, and not simply to go with the flow. Palm Sunday urges us to march to the beat of a different drum.

    Be warned.

    This is scary stuff.

    Holy Week was no Sunday School picnic.

    But Jesus calls us to see the world differently and then to act accordingly.

    In that choice to participate in the Jesus movement is the future of the church, and the future of the world.

  • Turning towards the cross

    Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year A)
    St Paul’s Church, Byron Bay
    St Oswald’s Church, Ewingsdale

    Today we enter the holiest period of the Christian year.

    In a week’s time we begin Holy Week, but today—a week out from Palm Sunday—we turn ourselves towards the cross. As Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51), so the church invites us to turn our hearts towards the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus.

    In traditional church terms, we are entering Passiontide. More about that shortly.

     

    Three High & Holy Festivals

    We have many holy days and festivals in the life of the church, but there are three that tower above all the others. They stand out from the pack, as it were.

    Christmas

    This is the first of the three, and it retains a strong grip on public consciousness as well. Even people with a minimal connection to the life of the church are aware that we are celebrating the incarnation, the coming of God among us in the person of Jesus.

    At the very heart of the Christmas celebrations is the sense of Emmanuel, God-with-us. Not just with us humans, but with all creation; since to become a human is also to become a child of the earth, and be part of the universal web of life.

    Not only are we formed from the star dust created at the Big Bang, but so was Jesus.

    God, Emmanuel, chooses to be immersed in the stuff of creation.

    Christmas not only invites us to see God in the Christ Child, but also to discern God all around us, between us, within us. This is an insight at the heart of Celtic Christianity, and we see it expressed so clearly in the great Celtic hymn, St Patrick’s Breastplate:

    Christ be with me,
    Christ within me,
    Christ behind me,
    Christ before me,
    Christ beside me,
    Christ to win me,
    Christ to comfort
    and restore me.
    Christ beneath me,
    Christ above me,
    Christ in quiet,
    Christ in danger,
    Christ in hearts of
    all that love me,
    Christ in mouth of
    friend and stranger.

    We are not alone in a universe with neither centre nor perimeter.

    Indeed, we are learning to appreciate the universe as in some sense the body of God, and God herself to be the beating, passionate heart at the centre of all that is. Emmanuel. God with us.

    This is one of the great theological insights of the Christian tradition.

    Easter

    This is the second of the three great Christian festivals, and it lasts several days.

    If Christmas offers us meaning, as children of a universe shaped and permeated by Emmanuel, then Easter offers us hope. More on that later, and throughout our Easter services.

    In brief, as Paul would say near the end of Romans 8: Nothing can separate us from God’s love …

    Pentecost

    The third of the three great Christian celebrations is Pentecost, or Whitsunday in traditional English language. We shall celebrate that festival around the time that my role here concludes, so let me just suggest at this stage that Pentecost celebrates the powerful presence of God’s Spirit in the world, in the church, and in our own lives.

     

    Passiontide

    From today onwards we can sense the approach of Easter.

    Our readings begin to focus on themes relating to death and new life.

    In many churches purple cloths will cover ornamentation considered too upbeat for such a solemn period of the year.

    Palms are cut and crosses are woven in preparation for Palm Sunday.

    We prepare to walk deeply into the mystery of our Lord’s passion, death and resurrection.

    This is not just an idea, it is something we do—and do together—as a community of faith.

    For clergy and lay ministers it includes the Chrism Eucharist in the Cathedral as we renew our commitment to ministry in service of the Christ, his people, and the world.

     

    Holy Week

    From Palm Sunday to Easter Day we mark the journey with special opportunities to gather for prayer and reflection. We do not just want to think about those final days before Jesus was killed, but—to the extent that we can—we want to enter deeply into the great story that lies at the heart of our faith (and our identity) as Christians.

    Palm Sunday – a celebration rich with colour and story

    Weekdays in Holy Week – daily Eucharists to engage deeply with the Gospel traditions

    Maundy Thursday – recalling the Last Supper, the feet washing, the lonely vigil, the arrest, the flight of the disciples

    Good Friday – choosing to stand at the foot of the cross

    Holy Saturday – gathering at Broken Head to light the holy fire and make the Easter Proclamation, Christ is risen!

    Easter Day – joining our worship with Christians around the world in this year when Eastern and Western Christians share the same date for Easter.

    The Valley of Dry Bones

    Our first reading from Ezekiel is the prophetic vision of a valley littered with dry bones.

    Such a scene suggests disaster, total disaster. In a culture where the dead are buried as soon as possible after death, a scene such as this suggests either a catastrophic military defeat or a major natural disaster. There have been no survivors. No-one remains to bury the dead.

    God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?”

    It is a hopeless case. The obvious answer is, “No.”

    But God commands Ezekiel to speak to the bones, and a miracle occurs. It is a vision, not a description of an actual event. But it offered hope to the people of ancient Israel and Judah, that their nation would recover from the disasters that had befallen them.

    As we enter Passiontide, these ancient words invite us to see that even the Cross will not be the end of the story.

    Of course, coming at the end of a week when a cyclone has brought destruction and flooding in vast areas of our own country, this ancient vision rings with a sense of hope ass people begin to rebuild their lives.

     

    Lazarus

    The story of Jesus raising Lazarus back to life after he had been dead for 4 days is unique to the Gospel of John. Matthew. Mark and Luke all seem unaware of this episode, which is remarkable in itself.

    In the local church at Jerusalem, this story begins the celebration of Holy Week and Easter.

    For people of faith, the death and raising of Lazarus points to the death and rising of Jesus.

    The great Palm Sunday processions begins from the village of Bethany, which in Arabic is known as al-Eizariyya (the place of Lazarus). For Muslims and Christians alike, the name of this village is forever changed by the story of what happened there.

    Pray this week for the people of Bethany, al-Eizariyya.

    Their village is now cut off from Jerusalem by a 10m concrete wall, erected by Israel to impose its definition of Jerusalem as a Jewish city on their Palestinian neighbours. As has happened now for several years, the ecumenical Palm Sunday procession next Sunday will not be able to start at Bethany, but will begin instead from Bethphage, which happens to be inside the Israeli wall of fear.

    Pray for a raising of people oppressed by military occupation for 50 years.

    Pray for the liberation of the occupiers whose hearts are turned to stone by fear.

    It has been too long. What can possibly change now?

    This too will pass. The dry bones will rise again, and a nation will find a fresh lease on life.

     

    People of Hope

    Today, and during the next two weeks, we are going to be reminded repeatedly that we are people of hope.

    We are sustained by hope even in the darkest days, because we believe that God turns death into life, reconciles those who are estranged, and vindicates the little people who seem to have little influence over the world in which we live.

    Further north we have watched in shock as Cyclone Debbie tore up communities and disrupted the lives of thousands of people.

    Closer to home we have seen homes, fields, roads and workplaces swallowed by raging flood waters during the past week as the remnants of that cyclone have brought massive rains to our own region.

    So this morning we pray for a blend of hope, courage and strength as people deal with continuing floods, clean up the mess, pick up the pieces of their lives, and rebuild.

    May the worst of times bring out the best from people, and may we discover yet again the power of God to sustain and revive us. That is, after all, our hope.

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